Tibet Environment's $2 Billion "Protection Plan"

Tibet Environment's $2 Billion "Protection Plan"

China has a new, $2 billion plan to protect the environment of Tibet, but Reuters reports that it may not be quite what it seems:

It was not clear if the "Ecological Protection Plan of Tibet" covered a series of hydropower projects planned for the region's rivers, which are the source for many of Asia's great waterways.

Environmentalists oppose the dams which they say will threaten the region's fragile ecology.

Scientists say the rivers are already at risk from climate change because warmer weather is shrinking the glaciers that feed them. Glaciers around Mount Everest, which spans Tibet and Nepal, have shrunk 170 meters in the past decade.

An Ecological Protection Plan that threatens a fragile ecology? It smacks of Sen. Inhofe's Clear Skies Act of 2002.

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